(Why) Does ordering Kindle in US have extra taxes / bigger price then the one listed?

[shamanNS]

As the title states my question would be:

Does ordering Kindle in the US (to be delivered to an address in Miami) from amazon.com really have extra taxes / bigger price then the one listed on the product page? If that is actually the case why is that the case? = Why isn't the actual price for the chosen delivery address / city / state listed on product page itself?

I was planning on ordering a Kindle Paperwhite Kids bundle (listed as $159.99) while my brother is in Miami and have him carry it when he return back to Europe (to Serbia, so no shipping from amazon.de and ordering from amazon.com when in stock [which looks to be rare occasion for new Kindle models] has an absurd amount of customs/import fees).

Only at checkout I've realized that the total price has $11.20 in taxes, in addition to listed price of $159.99.

Obviously I'm not a US resident neither is my brother...

Last November when I've order basically the same product (Kindle Paperwhite 5, with ads / "special offers") but on amazon.de to be delivered to an address in Germany the listed price on product page was the total price including VAT.

[JSWolf]

In the US, the price is shown with no tax. If there is tax, it will be added at checkout. Taxes vary in the US, so there could be no tax or a differing amount of tax. So Amazon can't show the price with tax.

[shamanNS]

They can / they could. If user is logged in & there is a shipping address chosen (prior to adding the item to cart) Amazon objectively has all the necessary information to "personalize"/ "customize" the price.

[Mims]

Florida taxes shipping cost as well the the cost of the product. I think the rate is 7 or 7.5 %..

[Deskisamess]

Amazon shows the "estimated tax to be collected" during the checkout process.

[issybird]

The address on the account might not be the shipping address, for example, with a gift. So until the buyer is checking out and specifies a shipping address, it would be impossible to show total price with tax. It’s an unrealistic expectation to see total price with tax on the product page when shopping at Amazon US. It’s not at all the same as VAT, which is uniform.

Of course in New Hampshire, the price on the product page is the end price.

[shamanNS]

It is not unreasonable to expect to either have a prominent indicator that the price listed doesn't include taxes and to expect that globally chosen address that already filters out what can and cannot be shipped also at the same time "informs" the listed price (and for that price to be the actual people are gonna pay for that product, + shipping) . And if or when user changes shipping address then update the price and display taxes amount.

To me this amounts to dishonest advertising.
And no, no common knowledge and facts should be assumed when shopping for stuff. If there are taxes indicate right away that it is so.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by shamanNS

It is not unreasonable to expect to either have a prominent indicator that the price listed doesn't include taxes and to expect that globally chosen address that already filters out what can and cannot be shipped also at the same time "informs" the listed price (and for that price to be the actual people are gonna pay for that product, + shipping) . And if or when user changes shipping address then update the price and display taxes amount.

To me this amounts to dishonest advertising.
And no, no common knowledge and facts should be assumed when shopping for stuff. If there are taxes indicate right away that it is so.

It's not dishonest at all. It's the way it's always been done. You will never change it.

[Deskisamess]

Originally Posted by shamanNS

It is not unreasonable to expect to either have a prominent indicator that the price listed doesn't include taxes and to expect that globally chosen address that already filters out what can and cannot be shipped also at the same time "informs" the listed price (and for that price to be the actual people are gonna pay for that product, + shipping) . And if or when user changes shipping address then update the price and display taxes amount.

To me this amounts to dishonest advertising.
And no, no common knowledge and facts should be assumed when shopping for stuff. If there are taxes indicate right away that it is so.

Give some examples of retail sites that do it the way you want.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

Give some examples of retail sites that do it the way you want.

Amazon.co.uk

But in the US, you won't find any website that shows the price with tax.

[hleo12]

Unless the US as a whole settles with how much they tax, there's little chance of that happening.

I was surprised too, to learn that the US has extra taxes with their sales. I was so used to just paying what's on the tag.

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by hleo12

Unless the US as a whole settles with how much they tax, there's little chance of that happening.

I was surprised too, to learn that the US has extra taxes with their sales. I was so used to just paying what's on the tag.

Quite. I too thought this was ridiculous and that obviously Amazon can do it -- but, well, Amazon can't even reliably *pay* the taxes, since taxes are imposed at all levels right down to individual cities and sometimes even parishes (!) and none of them are in any way uniform. Keeping track of that would be a nightmare, even if the US tax system on a national scale wasn't such a nightmare of complexity.

It has been noted that it's very much in the interest of tax preparation companies to keep this all insanely overcomplicated so you are forced to buy their ridiculously expensive "solutions" to a problem largely sustained by their own lobbying: but city taxes are an entirely different nightmare.

FYI, for Americans: this is all very unusual outside the US. Until I started doing the landlording thing in my late 30s I had never once had to prepare any sort of taxes ever. If all you have is a salary and pension, in the UK it is all done for you by the employer, the pension company, and the local council for local taxes. All I had to do was pay the local taxes, which is one single bill per year, direct-debited out on a monthly basis: the rest was extracted painlessly from my pay, so painlessly that when my employer screwed up in my early 30s and had to engage in a complicated dance to fix up the amount of tax being paid (a dance done by *their* accountants, at their cost, not at mine), I was actually wandering around asking people "they said my tax code was wrong. What the hell is a tax code?" because I'd never had to know what one of those was before.

The US tax system is utterly demented and designed to impose cognitive load on those least able to deal with it, and second only to its disaster of a healthcare system is the single largest reason why I will never ever move to the US.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by shamanNS

To me this amounts to dishonest advertising.
And no, no common knowledge and facts should be assumed when shopping for stuff. If there are taxes indicate right away that it is so.

You're shopping in the USA store. They do usual USA things.

I was astonished on my first visit to the USA to find that the prices on the shelves of items in a newsagent didn't match what I paid at the till. The prices advertised are without sales tax. The price paid at the till includes the sales tax.

It's not surprising that Amazon USA does the same. It's what Americans are used to.

[Deskisamess]

I live in Ohio, where there are 88 counties. The state sales tax rate is 5.75%, and there are 578 different jurisdictions where an additional sales tax up to 2.25% will be added to a purchase.

Our recent move took us to Summit County, where the rate is 8%, the highest it can be. Most of our shopping is done in Stark County where it's 7.5%. Lowest in the state is 7.25%.

[Calenorn]

For many years Amazon used legal loopholes to avoid charging its customers any sales tax in the US. One by one the states enacted legislation to force them to do so.

Everything said about the complexity of American sales tax is true. However, there is no technical reason why Amazon couldn't inform its customers of the sales tax on the product page. They have built a system that only reveals such details when you start the checkout procedure. American customers are accustomed to that in retail, but I imagine Amazon is counting on our impulsivity. Also, that way the sales tax does not contribute to the $25 minimum for free shipping.